When CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie announced his league’s new partnership with a semi-pro league in Mexico during Grey Cup week, one of that league’s stewards said he expected Mexican players to be on Canadian rosters as soon as the coming season.

The leaders of the CFL Players’ Association, shortly thereafter, said it was the first they had heard of anything like that, and word from the league quickly filtered out that details of the agreement with the Liga de Futbol Americano Profesional (LFA) were still to be sorted out.

Two months later, the first CFL-LFA draft has been completed, and all nine Canadian teams have acquired the rights to three Mexicans each after a combine in Mexico City. Quite how these players will be incorporated into CFL rosters remains unclear. Will they have to beat out an American or Canadian for a spot on the active or practice roster? Will there be a special designation to allow for the fact that the Mexican draftees have in some cases never played football professionally, or haven’t played for years?

I asked Brian Ramsay, executive director of the CFLPA, if he had a better understanding now of what the league is trying to accomplish with the Mexican partnership than he did in late November.

“We’re not in a position to be able to explain what the league is doing,” he said, “because we don’t know.”

You and me both, sir.

Diego Jair Viamontes, a receiver with the Mayas of the Liga de Futbol Americano Profesional, poses with Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie, left, and Edmonton Eskimos player personnel director David Turner, right, after becoming the first-overall selection in the inaugural CFL-LFA draft in Mexico City on Jan. 14, 2019.Dan Barnes/Postmedia

CFL teams have always been able to sign players from anywhere in the world, Ramsay notes. But roster construction is a collective-bargaining issue, and if some element of the LFA arrangement sets aside spots for players from Mexico, that would be something for the CBA. Conveniently, a new one has to be agreed upon before the start of the next season. And on this point, Ramsay reiterates himself a few times to make it clear: On the foray into Mexico, “if there are going to be collective-agreement issues, then (the league) will have to be prepared to bring those to the negotiating table.”

Aside from the absence of discussion with the players’ association about the LFA partnership, there is no lack of other questions about it. If the idea was to find untapped sources of talent to improve the quality of play in the CFL, Mexico was a curious place to start. The LFA has yet to begin its fourth season and its players work other full-time jobs, as they are paid the equivalent of less than $3,000 for the whole of the league’s spring season. Four of the eight stadiums have a capacity of less than 2,000, and only one of them, based in Mexico City, has a capacity of more than 10,000. It does not sound like a football hotbed. Is anyone from the AFL likely to be a better football player than the dozens of Americans who can’t quite make a CFL roster? Every season turns up on-the-bubble players who starred in the NCAA and who make an impact once given the chance to perform here. It’s a much deeper pool than the 50-odd players who went through the scouting combine on the weekend.

The Toronto Argonauts play a home game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in October 2018. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have seen flagging attendance for CFL games.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press/File

And if the real intention is less about mining Mexico for talent and more about creating inroads in a new market, as seems to be a large part of Ambrosie’s ambitious international sales job, the question becomes: how much of a boost can these foreign markets truly provide the CFL? The existence of a nascent semi-pro spring football league does not prove that Mexico is clamouring for more of the sport, especially when the NFL has already played regular-season games there. Similarly, Ambrosie has said he plans to meet with football associations in France, Germany, and various Nordic countries — there are Nordic football associations? — as part of his outreach, but what kind of an impact will that ultimately have on his league? Consider that the United States is by far the CFL’s biggest international market, and games have been on the ESPN network for several seasons. In announcing a new deal with ESPN on Monday, the CFL said its games averaged 163,000 viewers last season, up 19% from 2017. But NFL games routinely draw more than 10 million viewers in the U.S., and often have an audience of more than 20 million. CFL viewership in the States is less than 1% of that. Expanding into foreign markets is one thing, but expanding into them and having the impact be anything other than negligible is something else altogether.

Ambrosie’s response to skeptics of his international-growth agenda has been to say that there is nothing to stop the CFL from growing both at home and abroad. But as he was gushing about the excitement in Mexico City on the weekend and talking about all the TV cameras in the draft room, it was worth thinking about the day in Toronto last month, when the Argonauts introduced new head coach Corey Chamblin. There weren’t many TV cameras, and a tiny contingent of reporters, in the country’s biggest media market.

It has been trending this way for years, with flagging interest in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver even as the CFL has done well elsewhere. But it was a reminder that the future of the Canadian Football League doesn’t hinge on boosting its growth in Mexico or overseas. The important growth needs to take place in Canada. It feels a little too obvious to be pointing out, but here we are.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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